'The last bastion is the living room'

He may have faced protests on his first day at work, but the BBC's director of future media and technology believes he has won his doubters over. He shares his vision for the digital future with Owen Gibson

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Thursday October 16 2008

In the interview below we said that the BBC Trust had approved a £39m increase in bbc.co.uk's budget. This is incorrect. The trust has completed a service review of bbc.co.uk, but has not to date approved any new funding

Plenty of BBC executives have provoked fierce criticism over the years. But Erik Huggers, a former Microsoft executive who this year took over as director of its future media and technology (FMT) division, must be unique in facing down an angry mob on his first day. "People said 'oh my God, an executive from Microsoft in our precious BBC. Rome is on fire'," he says. "We had people picketing in front of TV Centre. But we took it really seriously and engaged with the group and listened to them. They were worried that all of a sudden Bill had his man in the BBC who would make sure all the Microsoft goodies would find their way into the machinery."

The genial but nakedly ambitious Dutchman, who spent nine years at Microsoft, claims to have largely won the crowd of anti-Microsoft protesters over, as well as staff who initially shared their suspicions. The online comments about the BBC's ambitions may suggest otherwise but many admit that Huggers, much more geek than luvvie, has made progress.

He joined the BBC in May last year to oversee the then troubled iPlayer project and was swiftly promoted to his current role in August. The timing seemed convenient. The previous incumbent, Ashley Highfield, had recently left to head up the commercial video-on-demand joint venture Kangaroo, which is the subject of a Competition Commission investigation. Just before his appointment was announced, BBC Online was lambasted by the Trust for overspending to the tune of £36m. Huggers has presented himself as a new broom.

"This place has more than 80 years of history in creating wonderful programming. But it has done that in a particular way for a very long time. When I came into the new role, the vision we were working towards was that FM&T was on earth to keep the BBC relevant in the digital age. Back when the powers that be came up with that, it was probably a very good statement. They saw this tsunami coming that could wash not only the BBC but the entire media landscape away," he explains. "Keeping the BBC relevant in the digital age is not something that really gets me out of bed. But creating the world's most valued open digital media services does. It's quite ambitious, quite game-changing and can be interpreted in many different ways." Er, right. So what does that actually mean? Huggers looks puzzled for a second, then continues.

"If you take iPlayer as an example, a year and a half ago there were a lot of questions in the press and industry because it had been promised and promised." After getting mired in internal politics and technological blind alleys, it finally launched in December last year and has been a roaring success. New figures show that 169m separate programmes have been requested since then.

"They hired me to come fix that. I realised that what we needed to do in FM&T was place a bet on software engineering. Previously, it was all about product and project managers. What do you get if you get a lot of project managers? A lot of people talking to each other," he says. So, he went out and hired senior software engineers from companies such as Kazaa, the file sharing technology that rocked the music industry to its foundations. "I brought more than a decade and a half of experience and a Rolodex of some of the best people," he says. "What was missing was this clear focus to ship product. Ship product, ship product. Even if it's not perfect."

He cites iPlayer as an example. He changed the focus from downloading to streaming and has continued to add new features and functionality ever since, including new versions for mobile phones. He promises that a long-awaited download version for Apple Macs will be available by the end of the year.

"If you look at what the heart of the BBC is about, it's about creative storytelling and editorial. But it started out as an engineering organisation. Lord Reith was more of an engineer at heart than he was a creative programmer," he says. "The message I've been pushing is that only if we find a way to get creative programme-makers partnering with creative engineers will we be able to do unique things. The next challenge for the BBC and the industry at large is to work out what you can do that is unique to the medium."

It is not a novel thought. New media types have for years loved to drag out the analogy of how early television programmes were little more than filmed radio plays. But Huggers believes key factors are coming together to make new forms of content a reality. It is also a crucial weapon in the ongoing battle to maintain the corporation's reach among all licence fee payers, especially those who are light BBC consumers, such as younger audiences and those from lower socio-economic groups.

While Huggers looks ahead to the sunny uplands of the digital future, others are still seeing the dark clouds of the £36m overspend revealed by the BBC Trust earlier this year. When the Trust then approved a further £39m increase in the budget, competitors were incredulous.

"It's not an easy thing to explain. What I'm interested in is the future and having the right systems in place and a BOL - a Butt On Line - that will make sure the service licence is managed," he says, pointing to a structural overhaul that involved the appointment of new chief operating officer and former HD chief Seetha Kumar as controller of bbc.co.uk. "We're putting a governance structure in place that is fit for purpose - cleaner, simpler, easier to understand. I'm going to personally make sure that what happened there never happens again."

Huggers has sought to bring a web 2.0 sensibility to the BBC. As successful as it is - third most popular site in the UK and the only non-American one in the top five - the site was still based until recently on foundations that were prehistoric in web terms. "It was very, very dated and rusty," he admits. And like all other major web players, he wants the BBC to become "absolutely, completely" part of the wider web. In the wake of last week's MediaGuardian special on the BBC's future, he is keen to lay out its openness and transparency credentials. Among the UK tech community, this is a big deal. They feel passionately that the BBC could and should do more to spread its innovation more widely, open up its content to all-comers and help foster a UK startup community.

Huggers insists he feels the same way and points to existing initiatives such as BBC Backstage, a developer's network that seeks to open up its technological riches, and the development of open standards as evidence of progress. And yet the suspicion persists that, even if the techies at the BBC are on board, it's not an attitude that has yet permeated fully among other senior executives.

Huggers insists that is changing and even suggests that the idea of hosting content from other websites on a BBC "dashboard" or landing page has been discussed.

The BBC website will be overhauled in the next 12 months. As video becomes ever more central to the site, he expects Jana Bennett's Vision division to step up to the plate in the way that first news and sport, then audio and music, did. The mobile internet will also be a huge growth area, he predicts, as it finally comes of age.

Another key project is developing an open standard for delivering web content to televisions. Huggers believes it will be the "future of TV". He reveals that the plan - codenamed Canvas and potentially taking the iPlayer on to Freeview and opening up a world of video content from the BBC and other providers - will go before the Trust for approval shortly. It is also part of the package of measures that director general Mark Thompson hopes will head off the threat to the licence fee by providing value to the BBC's public service rivals.

"The internet has touched the PC, it's touched mobile phones. The last bastion is the living room. Many have tried, many have failed. Many are still trying. But all those other players have a vertically integrated approach where you're in their walled garden," says Huggers. "Our approach is for it to become an open industry standard that allows anyone to build an application and run it in the living room. That's quite a game-changer."

Huggers has before him several carefully prepared typed sheets of A4 with the "key messages" he wants to get across. Towards the end of our conversation, he places before me a representation that maps his department and others in the BBC on to a diagram that shows them as the earth, the sky and the "cloud" - the buzzword de jour for all the data held in the ether. It is, predictably, completely baffling.

Whereas Highfield played a cheerleader role in plugging its digital activity into the wider BBC, Huggers represents a new phase in the evolution of the BBC's new media division. It is one that emphasises delivery. It has fallen to a Dutchman with a hint of an American accent, who built his professional reputation at a software company that still inspires visceral hatred from some, to help save what he describes as "this unique British institution".

"I arrived [at the BBC] at the end of a period of quite a lot of uncertainty. That confidence has started to build up again. It's fantastic to see a new culture building. Success leads to more success."

Curriculum vitae Age 35Education Avans University, HollandCareer1998-2007 Microsoft, various roles including launching MSN in the Benelux countries and leading European business development for Windows MediaMay 2007 group controller, BBC future media & technology2008 director, BBC future media & technology